Comey Was Russia's Useful Idiot
The indictment of Comey is disgraceful. So was his behavior in 2016.
The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey is a disgrace. Trump and his acolytes have lost their minds if they think anything Comey did five years ago rises to the level of federal criminal prosecution. Most of them are not even pretending that Comey did anything illegal — just that he treated Trump and his allies unfairly and for that, karma is coming for him in the form of a federal grand jury indictment. If you need more evidence, watch this clip from my appearance yesterday on CNN.
According to my sparring partner, karma, rather than career prosecutors, should effectively be in charge of the Justice Department. But though they are dead wrong about this, they and every single member of the corporate media are missing the biggest story about Comey and have missed it since 2016.
Comey was one of the worst FBI Directors in history — not because he was mendacious but because he was a useful idiot for the Kremlin, which ran its most successful intelligence operation against the United States on Comey’s watch.
The truth is that Donald Trump would likely not be president today if not for Comey and his decision to prioritize his political survival over exposing Russian election interference. He did this because he did not want Washington Republicans to accuse him of meddling in the 2016 election — and as a result, he meddled in the 2016 election to harm Hillary Clinton. In the process, he spent more time protecting his own backside than protecting U.S. national security.
In 2015–2016, Comey’s FBI investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State. The Bureau ultimately concluded that Clinton had been “extremely careless” but did not commit a prosecutable crime.
Nevertheless, Comey broke with precedent in July 2016 by holding a press conference to announce his decision not to recommend that she be criminally charged. That press conference was an outrage. Under normal circumstances, prosecutors either make a statement when they secure an indictment or let the indictment do the talking for them. When they decline to bring charges, they do not hold a press conference maligning the target, as Comey did. His language — criticizing Clinton’s handling of emails while clearing her legally — gave Republicans ammunition to attack her integrity and took up media oxygen all summer long.
Then, just eleven days before the election that year, Comey sent a letter to Congress revealing that the FBI had discovered new Clinton-related emails on a laptop belonging to former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who, at the time, was married to Clinton’s longtime aide Huma Abedin. Though Comey quickly reaffirmed the Bureau’s decision not to recommend charges against Clinton, the timing of the announcement shook the Democratic campaign in its final stretch.
At the same time, U.S. intelligence agencies were tracking Russian military intelligence as it hacked into Democratic National Committee servers and Clinton campaign accounts. Starting in June 2016, the stolen material began appearing in outlets like WikiLeaks, often timed to maximize political damage to Clinton. By October, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence formally stated that the Russian government was behind the hacks, seeking to interfere with the election. That very day, Wikileaks began releasing tranches of emails Russian intelligence had accessed from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, which had absolutely no news value but which were nevertheless obsessively covered by media outlets from The New York Times to Fox News.
These Russian cyberattacks formed the foundation of an investigation into Russian hybrid warfare tactics to influence the 2016 election, which later expanded into scrutiny of possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
And here is where the storylines intersect and why Comey’s indictment today is both karmic if you are a Democrat and deeply inappropriate if you care even remotely about the rule of law.